Longmen Art Projects 龍門雅集

Chuang Che 庄喆 莊喆

Chuang Che was born in Beijing, China in 1934, but he grew up and received his education in Taiwan. He entered the National Taiwan Normal University fine arts department in 1954. After graduating in 1958, he joined the Fifth Moon Group the same year, becoming one of its main members. Also in 1958, he participated in the Sao Paulo Biennial for the first time. Chuang Che had his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the National Art Gallery (now the National Taiwan Arts Education Center) in Taipei. And in 1962 he won the gold medal at the 2nd Hong Kong International Salon of Paintings, with the landscape The Shadow of a Cloud - painted with oil using the fluid brushstrokes of calligraphy. Receiving considerable encouragement and praise, he embarked on an artistic adventure, embracing this concept and technique. From 1963 to 1973 Chuang Che taught in the Tunghai University Taiwan Taichung department of architecture. In 1966 he won the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award and traveled to the United States to study contemporary world painting. From the early 1970s to the present day, he has resided in New York, where he continues to make art.

Chuang Che's abstract landscape paintings originally began as depictions of the external appearances of nature, and then turned to expressing form and spirit as their ultimate goals. He introduced the lines, shapes and structures of calligraphy into his paintings, manifesting an intrepid, spirited grandeur through the ethereal fluidity of his brush. The modulations and rhythmic pauses of his brushstrokes, to the accompaniment of colors, pirouetted through his spaces in a nearly ecstatic state. His pictures frequently expressed the dispositions of nature - gradual erosion, collision, frostiness, dense mistiness, moist lushness. With dense, expansive undulations - vertical or horizontal, shrinking or expanding - his images, alternately chaotic and soaring, blazed many new visual trails. They genuinely reflect a sudden inner realization of wisdom on the part of the artist.